


The Coldest You've Ever Been

by DoubleBit



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Bad Accents, Blow Jobs, Fluff and Angst, Hand Jobs, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pickles is straight except when he isn't, Statutory Rape, Underage Drinking, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 02:43:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6638155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoubleBit/pseuds/DoubleBit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pickles just wants to stay warm, but a snowstorm and an Iron Maiden album trigger a memory that makes him want a little more than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Cold Place

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This is my first fic in this fandom, and my first venture outside of Game of Thrones in a very long time. So that's why I can only write neurotic identity angst. *bows down to y'all who write such funny fics*  
> 2\. I play fast and loose with time-line/ages, and this puts Pickles as 15/16 in 1984.  
> 3\. Thanks to anyone who reads! <3

When he left Wisconsin for Los Angeles – and then much later than _that_ washed up on a beach in Ft. Lauderdale wearing nothing but party beads, a single water wing, and the worst sunburn of his life – Pickles swore he’d left the cold behind for good. Sure, Midwestern winters were brutal, but they also totally _sucked,_ and wearing fur was only extravagant if you had too much money to _need_ it. So Pickles kept his wing of Mordhaus on the balmy side, and if Toki and Skiwsgaar wanted to freeze their nuts off for nostalgia’s sake, that was their problem.

On the first day of the blizzard, Pickles stripped naked and wrapped himself in his snow-leopard hide to sit beside the fire and watch the flakes gather on the spires. By the fifth day, the Klokateers’ quest to fell more trees for fuel had turned to a scene of carnage which Murderface approvingly likened to Napoleon’s incursion into Russia. The hearth blazed on, but Pickles began to feel the chill seeping into his bones, tightening around his heart like a clenched fist.

Thankfully, there was alcohol. Pickles had insisted that the stores of Mordhaus be stocked with enough of it to last a lifetime in the event of some cataclysm. Y2K had been a complete disaster – hardly anything happened – but as the snowdrifts began to climb ever-higher against the fortress, Pickles congratulated himself on his foresight. Of course, the others would have to fend for themselves. _It ah, doesn’t actually warm you,_ he recalled Charles saying once, while the doctors treated the tips of Pickles’ ears and nose for “frost-nip,” which had to be about the most pussy-sounding cold-injury imaginable. _It dilates your blood vessels, and increases your susceptibility to ah, hypothermia._ (Which sounded way more badass.)

Whatever. What the fuck did Charles know about being cold? Wasn’t he from South Dakota, or some other tepid, garbagy state where nothing ever happened? And moreover, wasn’t he a robot? Offdensen showed signs of human emotion on something like a bi-annual basis, and witnessing them made Pickles feel uncomfortable and strange, like a child who’s just walked in on something, not understanding it exactly, but understanding that it wasn’t meant for his eyes.

A part of him preferred not understanding. Charles was there to clean it up – the money, the politics, the press, and most of all the blood; and he might sigh and let slip a monotone “Jesus Christ” when he thought no one was paying attention, but he never _judged_ you the way everybody else did, never expected you to know better. How many times had he pulled Pickles out of a pair of piss-soaked pants, or watched him cry like a little bitch while the doctors excised loose shards of glass from the soles of his feet, never once breathing a word of reproach or complaint? What would somebody like that know about being _cold?_

On the sixth day of the snowstorm, Pickles stayed in bed. He drank a handle of spiced rum, and set his sheets on fire when he upended an overflowing ash-tray, and then once that was extinguished, drank a fifth of tequila while the gears installed a new mattress. He tried to read, but his teeth chattered and his fingers trembled too severely to trace along the lines of text to keep him from losing his place. Pickles slammed the book – leather-bound, first edition, borrowed – closed before hurling it into the fireplace, popping open a second bottle of Skyy and staggering out into the hall, still swaddled in his leopard skin.

Instantly, he regretted his bare feet, but he shuffled onward, the liquor driving the blood up into his cheeks. Against the black stone, he saw the white whirl of his breath in the air. 

“I am too fackin’ rich to be dis fackin’ _cold,_ ” he announced to nobody, lengthening his stride as he hung a right towards Offdensen’s office.

Approaching the doors, he heard music – not in itself unusual. Nate once claimed that he’d caught Charles rocking out to their first demo late one night in his office, volume cranked loud enough that he hadn’t heard Nathan enter until the singer cut in with a bellowing laugh.

“Is dis trues?” Toki teased. “Ams yous our biggest fans?”

“I wouldn’t be much of a manager if I ah, didn’t enjoy your music,” Charles replied. And while Pickles had to admit it was a good save – because who _didn’t_ love Dethklok? – he also didn’t miss the flush that crept up Offdensen’s neck from beneath the white collar of his shirt.

Pickles raised his fist to knock – motherfucker would have to fix the heat, or at least find some more snow-leopards – when all of a sudden he recognized the opening drumbeat of Iron Maiden’s “The Prisoner” pounding through the chilly air. He felt a shiver wash over him, and then a wave of heat.

*

“Heey, does Seth live here?”

The accent made Pickles cringe – as though he needed another reminder that he was freezing his ass off in Tomahawk-Fucking-Nowhere, Wisconsin. He spun around to squint into the blowing snow at the young man who’d jogged up the driveway after him, wearing a parka that looked a helluva lot warmer than Pickles’ leather jacket, and a scarf that looked like the kind of thing your mom might knit for your brother. Pickles shrugged to readjust the straps of his backpack.

“Whadda ya want wit’ dat douchebeeg?”

The boy – couldn’t be much older than Seth – stopped to consider Pickles carefully, eyes travelling from his threadbare ski-cap down to the toes of his hand-me-down Sorels before settling again on his face. “He told me his brother was an ugly little leprecan,” said the boy, with a smile that was something other than mean.

At the time though, Pickles was too goddamn cold to notice. “Yeah, well, he told me some unemployed scumbeeg dildo might stap by, but it’s hard fer me ta keep his friends street, ya know?”

_Fack you, asshole,_ Pickles expected him to say, but instead the boy just snorted, as if startled by a funny joke. “Ya, I bet,” he said, pulling a half-spent cigarette out of his pocket. “Heey, you wanna light dis fer me? You got doze real shitty gloves, an’ I don’t feel like takin’ aff my mittens.”

“Fack you,” said Pickles, snatching the Bic from the boy’s hand and pressing the cigarette to his own lips to suck a spark into the tip. He helped himself to a couple deep drags before handing it back. Spotting the boy’s car at the end of the driveway with its out-of-state plates, he surmised, “Yer nat from here, huh?”

The boy shook his head. “Nah. Jest moved down from da Yoo-Pee. Tamahack is kind of a shit-hole, but I’m tryna keep ootta trouble fer a while.”

Pickles gave a smirk. “Well, you been here like a minute, an’ you already managed to meet up wit’ Seth, so...”

“Dat’s funny, ‘cause he told me _you_ were da biggest fack-up in town.”

Pickles shrugged. “I mean, dere’s fack-ups and den dere’s _fack_ -ups, ya know?”

“Ya?” The boy leaned closer. “So which’re you?”

“Da kind dat don’t stand up a friend so’s I can take my parents’ cair down to da junior hey to see if dere’s any girls dere want a ride home.” Pickles rubbed his hands together. “Heey, it’s fackin’ freezin’ out here. You wanna come inside?”

“Ya. Heey, my name’s Leif, by da wee.”

Pickled rolled his eyes. “‘Course it is,” he replied, giving his best handshake with fingers stiff as wood. “I’m Pickles.”

“Pickles?” Leif arched an eyebrow, and something about it made Pickles’ mouth go dry.

“Yeah. Pickles. Like, ya know, like… _pickles._ ”

His parents were home already – mother somewhere in the kitchen, while his father read the paper in his recliner. Samson – the dog – lay curled in front of the fireplace and opened one eye at the two boys before drifting back to sleep.

Pickles cleared his throat. “I uh, I’m home. If Seth shoos up, me an’ his friend Leif are hangin’ out upsteers.”

“Hmm.”

Pickles didn’t bother to wipe his boots – just tromped off towards the stairs, leaving a trail of snow rapidly melting onto the hardwood floor behind him. He heard Leif hurry to catch up, felt his heart pounding a little as another pair of footsteps seemed to chase him up the narrow stairs to his bedroom.

“Ooh Jesus. It’s fackin’ freezin’ up here too.” Leif pulled the flaps of his rabbit-fur bomber against his ears, black trim the same color as his hair.

“I tat you were from da _Yoo-Pee,_ ” Pickles teased, dropping his backpack onto the bed and pulling out a plastic forty-ounce. Noticing the way Leif gaped at him, he apologized: “Sarry I ain’t gat one to shear. Wasn’t expectin’ company.”

“Ya know, I never tat I’d say dis ta anyone, but it looks like you gat a fackin’ prablem, eh.” Leif kicked at a cluster of Old Milwaukee cans that had spilled over the top of Pickles’ waste-basket and onto the floor.

Pickles smiled as he twisted the cap off his forty, holding the bottle well away from himself as the carbonation fizzled over onto the floor. “Ain’t much else to do in Tamahack,” he observed, then licked the backs of his knuckles where the beer had trickled along his hand. “An’ like ya said, it’s fackin’ cold up here.”

“Did Seth get dat fer ya?”

“Nah. I’m nat a fourteen-year-old girl.” Pickles took a long, thirsty drink, not minding the dribble that ran out the corner of his mouth. Then, seeing the way Leif stood – looking a little lost amidst the pile of empties – he said, “Uh, make yerself at home, chief. Sarry dere’s no, uh, cheers er nothin’, but uh, dere’s da bed. An’ uh, da floor.” He kicked a few of the cans aside. “Anywee, fackin’ relax. I’m sure Seth’ll be home soon, an’ you can go jerk each other aff, er whatever.” Leif scratched at the film of frost on the inside of the window pane, and Pickles cleared his throat. “You, uh, like music?”

Leif’s eyes lit up, icy blue. “Ya. I mean, I’m nat a musician er notheen, but…” He glanced at the junky old Epiphone that Pickles had bought at the pawn shop two summers ago, leaned up against the electronic drum-set that Seth had got for Christmas last month and promptly lost interest in. “But ya. Music’s basically da only theen to stap ya from blowin’ yer brains oot up here.”

Pickles contemplated saying something mean, but not that many people ever came up to his room, and none of them were so – well, _interested_ in him. He glanced at the open door, sure that the only reason his parents hadn’t come up to barge in on them was because Leif was _Seth’s_ friend, who wore a proper coat and didn’t look like one of the dirtbags that Pickles hung out with after hours behind the school.

So, like an asshole, he only offered to put on a record. “So how’d ya meet my fackhead brother?” he asked, squatting on the floor to rifle through a crate of vinyl.

Leif’s eyes shifted sideways for a moment as he leaned back on Pickles’ bed, and Pickles couldn’t help but notice how long his legs looked in those tight, acid-washed jeans. “We, uh, we were in a cell together at county fer a few hours last week,” said Leif.

“Heh.” Pickles took another sip of beer. “I gatta say, yer plan fer stayin’ outta trouble in Tamahack seems fackin’ headed fer disaster.”

“Ya, well. I have a hard time sittin’ still.”

“I think dey gat drugs fer dat.” Pickles pulled a record from his collection and held it up for Leif’s approval. “Nat too heavy fer ya?”

Leif grinned. “Hell nah. Dat’s like, maybe my favorite album of all time.”

Pickles turned the cover over in his hands – a used copy of 1982’s _Number of the Beast_ that he’d picked up at the record store the last time his family passed through Eau Claire. He’d come close to begging for it, he remembered, sliding the vinyl from its sleeve and placing it delicately on the turn-table as his trembling hands would allow. And yeah, it was chilly, but when did they start shaking so _bad?_

“Did ya go see ‘em when dey played in Madison last year?” Leif scooted over to make room for Pickles on the edge of the mattress.

“Nah, nat really.” Pickles tugged off his ski-cap and raked his fingers through his hair. “I tried ta hitch down dere, but I gat picked up by patrol outside da city limits. Dey, uh… dey know me well enough. Wrote me a ticket an’ brat me home. Must’a been a fackin’ good shoo.”

“Ya.” Leif’s lips parted into a wry smile. “I mean, it was a big crowd. Fackin’ sold oot, and dere was a winter storm advisory. It gat so windy dat da lights started flickerin’, an’ people started freakin’ oot. But dey jest kept playin’, like it was totally meant to happen. We all gat totally snowed in – couldn’t even get ootta da parkin’ lat til da next mornin’.”

Pickles shivered. “Okee, so dat sounds fackin’ ahful. How’d you stee warm?”

Leif shrugged. “Dat’s a whole ‘nother story. Too bad I didn’t drive past ya before da cops did. I could’a picked ya up.”

“Yeah,” said Pickles. “Dat’s too bad.” He took a pull off his forty.

Leif shifted slightly and reached out to pluck at the high E of Pickles’ guitar. “You in a beend?” he asked.

Pickles almost jumped when Leif’s knee collided with his own. “Uh, nah. Who da hell am I gonna be in a beend wit’ in dis fackin’ town? Soon as I turn eighteen, I’m fackin’ outta here.”

“Where ya gonna go?”

Pickles shrugged, like he hadn’t been thinking about it every night for the past six months. “L.A. er whatever.” Taking another long drink, he caught the way Leif stared at him – thirsty. Pickles looked at the clock beside his bed, but the display only blinked 00:00, as usual.

Leif unzipped the front of his parka to find something in a pocket, and Pickles realized that a hint of his breath was still just visible in the air of the room. Leif glanced at the door before revealing an expertly-rolled joint. “Seems like yer brother might be a while,” he said. “Trade ya a couple hits for some’a dat beer?”

“ _First_ hit,” said Pickles, and before he could think added, “An’ a kiss.”

_Jest jokin’, ya fackin’ homo,_ he expected to hear himself say, but Leif didn’t move to leave or punch him in the face, so Pickles just sat there holding his breath and feeling the blood creeping into his cheeks. He didn’t know what had possessed him; maybe it was the idea of ruining whatever his brother had planned for Leif. Maybe it was the idea of making out with someone – okay, another _guy_ – while his parents sat just downstairs. Or maybe it was just the idea of someone in his room – sitting on his _bed_ – who didn’t smell like a bong-hit blown into an old gym sock.

Leif raised an eyebrow, the beginning of a smile tugging at the corner of his chapped lips. “A kiss?” he repeated.

“I mean, uh, unless ya don’t wanna. Er, an’ I don’t know why I tat ya _would,_ but, uh –”

Leif held out the joint and his lighter, and Pickles stopped stammering. His shaking fingers struggled with the plastic Bic, until Leif pried it from his grip to ignite it for him. Grateful, Pickles took the deepest hit of his life, and before he could exhale, found Leif’s lips pressed against his own. It was a dry kiss, until it wasn’t. As soon as Pickles felt the other boy’s tongue in his mouth, he recoiled into a fit of coughing. “Dood! Jesus! Dat’s – dat’s so fackin’ _gay!_ ”

Leif laughed as he took a puff, then shook his head, black hair falling into his eyes. “Small-town boys are such a fackin’ trip,” he wheezed, passing the joint back to Pickles and helping himself to a swig of Pickles’ forty.

“Heey!” Pickles heard his own voice crack, and for the first time since he could remember, his bedroom seemed just _stifling._ “I ain’t no small-town boy.”

“Ya?” Leif leaned forward to run a fingertip along the curve of Pickles’ eyebrow, passing over the silver ring there, pressing just hard enough to hurt. “ _Prove it._ ”

Pickles swallowed.

This wasn’t his first time – strictly speaking – but he’d never gone from first to third base so fast. He’d also never been so terrified. Before he had time to talk himself out of it, Pickles had dropped to his knees beside the bed, kissing Leif with a cotton-dry-mouth, fingers fumbling with his belt, pulling away just long enough to say, “I’m nat – I’m nat a _faggot,_ awreet?”

Leif rolled his eyes. “Wasn’t gonna call ya one.” He tried to comb his fingers through Pickles’ orange tangles, but that only made them worse.

Pickles winced – “Ow! Fack!” – and glared at him, face flushed, eyes wide.

“Sarry. Heey, uh – you never done dis before, have ya? Like, wit’ a guy?”

“Er…” Pickles hesitated for a moment, unsure whether he’d rather admit to being a virgin or a fag. “I, uh. Nat exactly.”

“Well, ya don’t gatta. I mean,” Leif gnawed on his bottom lip for a moment. “I mean, I fackin’ _want_ ya to, dough.”

And that did it for Pickles. 

*

Leif finished him off with a hand-job, which was all that Pickles would allow – pants still around his thighs, briefs shoved awkwardly to one side – and anyway, it only lasted about fifteen seconds, so that hardly counted. Unfortunately, the B-side of the record ended somewhere within those fifteen seconds and Pickles didn’t have time to stifle the pathetic little sound that he made when he came.

“Heey, uh…” Standing on the front porch in just a ratty t-shirt, Pickles scratched at the back of his neck. “You uh… you ain’t gonna tell Seth, are ya?”

“Nah.” Leif gave a reassuring wink as he lit his cigarette and stepped out into the driveway. “I’m jest glad he wasn’t home.”

“Yeah, me too,” Pickles agreed. _Wanna come over again sometime?_ he wanted to ask. _Next time, wanna make it last a little langer?_

Instead, he settled for, “Hey, stee outta trouble, dood.” _Wee to go, dildo. Fackin’ unforgettable._

But Leif flashed him a grin and a pair of middle fingers – hardly offensive in wool mittens. “Well, at least now I know where it lives.” At the end of the drive, he turned to walk backwards for a few steps and called out, “Ya might wanna put on a different shirt – sometheen warmer, maybe.”

Pickles couldn’t suppress the stupid smile that stayed on his face for the rest of the evening, even throughout an exceptionally quiet supper. _They **know,**_ he thought. They _had_ to know. How could they not see the flush in his cheeks, or the way he kept dropping his silverware? But they didn’t ask, and he didn’t say. In retrospect, they probably just thought he was drunk. Which he was.

He remembered lying in bed that night, shivering despite the creaky old space-heater beside his mattress. He heard the door open loudly when Seth finally stumbled in, sometime around one, and he heard his mother shuffling out in her nightgown to greet him.

*

Pickles hadn’t thought about that in – well, he deliberately hadn’t thought about it in years. And yeah, there were those _other_ times, but that was Pickles the Rock-Star, Pickles Fucked Out of His Mind On Ketamine, Pickles Who Was a Complete Fucking Madman, and Therefore Might Like Getting Fucked By a Dude Every Once In a While. Not Pickles the High-School Kid with the Shitty Cotton Gloves, Getting Jizz All Over the Front of His Motorhead T-Shirt While His Parents Watched “Wheel of Fortune” In the Living Room. And anyway, he left home for good only a couple weeks later, and never did see Leif from the U.P. again. So what was there to think about?

But now he stood outside his manager’s office, eighteen years and a bajillion dollars later, listening to that same intro to “The Prisoner,” and the whole house was fucking freezing like his shitty bedroom on Charlene Avenue, and he remembered how cold the floor felt against his knees, the open door, because he knew they’d never bother to come upstairs, and the way it tasted when he swallowed, because you might as well go all the way right? (And Gad, how facked up was it that it made him feel like a fackin’ _king?_ )

Pickles managed a few arrhythmic knocks on Offdensen’s door before he slumped against it, feeling like a boy who’s stumbled to his parents’ bedroom after a bad dream.


	2. A Warm Place

The knock indicated Nathan or Pickles; Skwisgaar rarely visited, Murderface never bothered knocking when he did, and Toki tended to just stare at the door until it opened. And since Nathan’s colossal fists rattled the hinges like a thunderstorm, Offdensen knew without checking the closed-circuit feed that he’d find Pickles, swaying unsteadily in the corridor outside his office. He knew Pickles’ tentative knock the same way he knew Pickles’ deranged penmanship, his uneven footfalls, and his shallow breathing. None of these details mattered, and yet Charles knew them as certainly as he knew anything. And while everyone in the world knew that Pickles was drunk, the question – as always – was _how_ drunk?

“Ain’t you a bit _old_ fer dis noise, chief?”

_Pretty damn drunk,_ Charles concluded, swallowing a shudder as Pickles’ breath hit him like an acid tidal wave.

“Is something the matter?” he asked, but Pickles wasn’t listening – just peering past him at the fire roaring in the hearth, clutching his snow-leopard pelt tightly around himself and shifting from one bare foot to the other on the cold granite of the hall. Offdensen cleared his throat and tried again: “Would you like to come in?”

Pickles blinked at him as if startled from a trance. “Seems warmer in here,” he observed, brushing against Charles as he staggered past to stand in front of the fire. He closed his eyes, swaying on the balls of his feet, toes just inches from where the embers had begun to overflow the grate.

_You ah, might want to take a couple steps back,_ Offdensen had decided to say, when he noticed the fur slipping away from Pickles’ bare shoulders and the words stuck in his throat and turned to a dry cough. He doubted Pickles even noticed, though Charles also knew he was the only one of the boys capable of acting coy.

“Heey, Charlie?”

The nickname had always irked Offdensen, though he knew that this was just Pickles, trying to talk with him like a regular jack-off. “Ah, yes?”

“What’s da coldest y’ever been?”

“The coldest…? Ah, Pickles – you’re standing extremely close to the fire…”

Pickles opened one green eye to look at him, four silver rings glinting in the light. “You afreed I might burn down yer office?” he asked with a thin smirk.

“If anyone’s going to burn down my office, it’ll be for legal reasons.” Charles waited a beat before moving to stand beside Pickles at the hearth. “But you _are_ probably the ah, most flammable person I know.” He nearly smiled at his own joke when Pickles asked:

“What the fack’d ya call me?”

“I… nevermind. What, ah – what was it you needed from me?”

“My room’s fackin’ freezin’.” Pickles readjusted his fur and turned to face Offdensen with a familiar expression, both helpless and demanding. He looked younger in the firelight; its bright glow washed out the dark, persistent circles beneath his eyes, and the crow’s feet which Pickles had recently begun to obsess over, but which Charles thought suited him. 

Though Offdensen knew the boys as well as they knew themselves, it still felt strange to see them like this: alone and weirdly vulnerable. _There’s Murderface, undermining the others to compensate for his own insecurities,_ or _Toki must be experiencing an episode of PTSD_ were much more manageable, comfortable thoughts than _Pickles has a lot of freckles on his shoulders_ – information that Charles didn’t know what to do with, but of course wouldn’t be able to forget. He removed his glasses to wipe them on his sleeve, as though that might somehow help him to unsee the freckles, or the goosebumps, or the weathered traces of an old stick-and-poke tattoo.

“Yes, I ah – apparently one of the corpse chutes got clogged and began to overflow. There are several cadavers blocking the eastern ventilation system and we had to shut off the central heating in your wing in order to dislodge them. The head of maintenance assures me the problem will be fixed by tomorrow morning. I, ah- I’m sorry. If you were cold.”

“Oh thank Gad.” Pickles sighed and returned to facing the fire. “I tat we’d run out’a dinosaur bones fer da furnaces.”

Charles glanced at the pile of death certificates on his desk, then at his watch, then at Pickles. He sensed that the drummer wanted something else, but whatever it was, he clearly didn’t intend to ask for it. Company, maybe, or a glass of the Remy Martin that Charles knew that Pickles knew he kept locked in the cabinet beside his desk.

“Would you care for a drink?” he offered.

Again, a single eye opened, an impish grin creeping across Pickles mouth. “Ya gatta ask?”

Charles felt himself returning the smile. “I suppose not.”

Pickles watched him pour – eyes wide, a thread of saliva dangling from his bottom lip – which Offdensen found endearing, if also pathetic. His mother always insisted he _did_ have a type.

He’d planned to pull a chair up beside the hearth, but Pickles had opted to sit cross-legged on the floor with the leopard skin spread across his lap, so Charles joined him there, carrying two brimming glasses and the bottle.

“To keeping warm?” Charles toasted.

“Cheers,” Pickles agreed, then slammed the entire drink. He wiped his mouth on the back of one hand, and with the other held out his glass for a refill. “So… ya didn’t answer my question. About what’s da coldest y’ever been?”

Charles set the bottle between them and sipped his cognac as he considered. The fire crackled quietly before the opening riff of “Run for the Hills” drowned out the silence between them. Charles shook his head. “Actually, I think that would have to be the night I went to see Iron Maiden play the Coliseum in Madison.”

Pickles leaned forward suddenly to look at Charles with intense interest. “No wee. What year?”

“Hmm. It must’ve been ’83, when they were touring this album.” Charles began to feel the slow, hot creep of the liquor, and loosened his tie slightly. “I wasn’t planning to go, but it was winter break during my first year of law school and some of the guys from my department were planning to drive up there and offered me a ride…”

“I heard it gat so shitty dat da power went out an’ everybody gat snowed in.”

Charles nodded. “That’s true. And the temperatures in Madison that night were something like minus-thirty with the wind-chill.” He picked up the fire-iron to turn one of the logs in the fire. “Makes my toes go numb just to think about it.”

“So how’d you stee warm?”

Offdensen weighed for a moment how much detail he might wisely divulge and settled on, “I hung out in a car.”

“A cair?” Pickles squinted at him. “Nat yer… nat da cair ya came in, huh?”

Goddamn he could be perceptive when he wanted to.

“No. My… the guys I rode up with kind of – disappeared once we got there. So I ended up with someone I met at the show.”

“I see.” Pickles topped off his glass, a few drops overflowing onto the floor. “Boy or a girl?”

Charles had never kept it a secret, exactly, but the question surprised him.

“A young man.”

“Hmm.” Pickles shifted, and Charles pretended not to notice the flash of red hair just below his navel. “Caallege boy?”

The lights died out for several seconds, Charles remembered, and in the darkness he felt something wet and sticky soaking the front of his Brooks Brothers shirt. When they came on again, just dim enough to see, he found himself nose-to-nose with a blue-eyed boy, carrying two half-empty plastic cups and shouting, “Sarry! Ooh shit – I’m really sarry! Dat’s gatta be da nicest shirt I ever seen in my life. Let me – let me buy ya a drink, eh?”

“No,” he told Pickles. “I don’t think so.” Offdensen mildly regretted not just fabricating some other answer to Pickles’ original inquiry, and hoped there were no graphic follow-up questions. He felt a bead of sweat rolling down his ribs, and Charles unbuttoned his suit-coat but hesitated for a moment as he decided whether to remove it. 

Pickles stretched out his legs so the soles of his feet nearly touched the embers, and leaned back with his palms splayed onto the hardwood floor behind him. “Fer Chrissakes, Charlie, jest take it aff. I pramise nat ta tell anyone I saa ya without a jacket.”

Charles chuckled as he folded his coat neatly, and then rolled up the sleeves of his custom Armani button-down. “I’m surprised you weren’t at that concert,” he said. “I mean, I know you were about three hours north, but I would’ve guessed you might’ve figured out a way to get down there.”

Pickles shook his head and lifted one hand to scratch at the back of his neck. “Nah. I – I had a plan ta get down dere, but uh, it didn’t pan out.” He shrugged, then rolled onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow while he refilled his own glass for a third time, then took a chug from the bottle for good measure. “Wish I’da been dere, dough. I wouldn’a ditched ya like doze caallege douchebeegs.”

Charles looked incredulous. “You would have been fifteen.”

“Yeah. An’ knowin’ you, I bet ya were weerin’ dis fackin’ thing.” Pickles reached out to rub the silk of Charles’ neck-tie between his thumb and forefinger. “Ya could’a bat me beer. I could’a sucked yer dick. It’s called symbiosis.”

Charles sprayed a mouthful of cognac into the fire, and the flames roared up in response. Pickles erupted into laughter, not seeming to notice as the leopard fur slid down his hips. Just when Offdensen thought he’d become inured to anything that might leave Pickles’ mouth, the drummer would surprise him with some newly-intimate level of filth, topped with a fancy, three-dollar cherry of a word.

“I’m pretty sure it’s called something else,” Charles said after he’d recovered and then repeated, “Because you would’ve been _fifteen._ ”

A smile still lingered on Pickles’ mouth when his light hold on Offdensen’s tie became a grip, and Charles swore his eyes had gone about three shades darker. “Den it’s a good thing I ain’t fifteen anymore,” he said, and pressed their lips together.

When he imagined kissing Pickles, Charles imagined something aggressive and sloppy. And yes, Pickles tasted like an ashtray filled with vodka, and yes, he tugged on Charles’ neck-tie almost hard enough to choke, but there was also something disarmingly _shy_ about it – a gentle, chaste kiss filled with a faint hum that _nearly_ banished Offdensen’s sense of reason:

“Pickles –”

“Ya don’t wanna die of da cold, do ya?” Pickles teased, licking his chapped lips. “It’s been snowin’ fer six deeys. Yer allowed ta _do_ stuff in survival situations – like, ya know, other doods. Or cannibalism.”

“Something tells me you ah, wouldn’t have to be on death’s door to try _that,_ either,” said Charles with a dry smile, and Pickles grinned.

“What can I see? I like da taste.”

And then this time there was Pickles’ tongue in his mouth, Pickles’ hands untucking Charles’ shirt to snake up beneath it, Pickles breaking away just long enough to breathe an appreciative, “Dang, Charlie –” and rake his fingernails down the hard muscle of Offdensen’s stomach.

It wasn’t the first time Pickles’ mouth had ended up on Charles, if you counted that night at the Crystal Mountain release party two years prior, when Pickles had leaned over to kiss his neck before whispering prophetically in his ear: “Charlie, I think I’m ganna be sick,” just milliseconds before a thick rush of vomit cascaded all over Pickles’ lap, Charles’ $700 shoes, and Roy Cornickleson’s priceless antique leather sofa.

Offdensen knew a bad idea when he saw it, but this bad idea looked awfully good – Pickles’ trembling fingers working at the buttons of his shirt, his cheeks flushed with heat, his cock jutting up beneath that ridiculous leopard pelt, and a steady stream of rationalizations flowing from his lips: “It’s late, Charlie. Ya work too much. Come back ta my room wit’ me. We can keep drinkin’, an’ you don’t gatta waste any more’a yer good shit an me. Ya can tell me all about what ya did in dat cair. We can listen ta records an a system twenty times better’n dis one. I gat a polar bear hide ya can wrap yerself in, if ya want. Ya can – ya can help me stee warm.”

Charles knew that was probably the closest Pickles would get to verbalizing what it was he really wanted, and he knew that if Pickles ever actually came out and _asked_ for it – “Cam an, Charlie – I jest want ya ta fack me til I puke” – he probably wouldn’t be able to say no.

Instead, he pried Pickles’ hands off his belt-buckle. “I, ah – I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Pickles’ smile faltered and he fell back onto his elbows. “What? Why nat?”

_Because you’re going to regret it_ having never been an effective argument with any of the boys, Offdensen opted instead for, “Because you’re off-limits.”

“Aff-limits?” Pickles balked at him, fingers twisting out of Charles’ grip to resume their mission. “Dat’s bullshit. Who told ya dat? Was it Nate? Did _Nate_ see I’m aff-limits? If dat mother _facker_ thinks he can–”

“No, Pickles.” Again, Charles captured the drummer’s wrists, and this time held them more forcefully. “Nathan never said that. But I, ah, think you know –”

“But I’m _nat!_ ” Pickles cut him off with a whine. “I’m _tellin’_ ya. I’m in da beend, an’ what I see goes, an’ I’m _tellin’_ ya that my ass is… totally, one-hundred percent… feer game…” He gazed at Charles with such a doleful expression that Offdensen felt his resolve wavering… until Pickles’ eyes crossed and his head dropped down onto the floor with a hard smack. “Ow. Fackin’. Ow.”

Charles sighed and damned himself for allowing things to descend as far as they had. If you made it a rule to never fuck a man who was too drunk to remember it, and Pickles the Drummer made it a rule to never fuck a man without getting too drunk to remember it, well… might as well be a law of the universe that you were never going to fuck Pickles the Drummer.

Pickles lay on the floor. He reached out to run his fingers up the length of Offdensen’s inseam, head lolling to one side to implore Charles with rapidly narrowing eyes as he made his final pitch: “I’ll suck yer dick ‘an. Everything. I might’a never. Went ta caallege, but… I still know. How to suck a dick. Dat’s one thing ya learn livin’ in Tamahack. Jeez, Charlie, ya heartless bastard. Keen’t ya… keen’t ya see how bad. I want ya right now?”

“I can see you’re about to pass out any second.”

Pickles’ eyelashes fluttered shut, and one hand slipped beneath the fur to give a few lazy tugs at his half-hard prick. “Nah.” His back arched slightly. “I can – it’s okee. Ya can still. Fack me anywee, Charlie. Don’t think dat jest because I’m. Uncanscious. Don’t mean I keen’t. Rack yer fackin’ world.” His hand stilled, mouth twisted in a long yawn. “ _Fack._ ”

Charles pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose to glance again at his watch. Normally, he’d be thinking about heading to bed at this hour, but he’d lost all hope of falling asleep anytime soon. “You, ah – you can stay here, if you want. Until the heating is fixed.” He allowed himself to brush a stray dreadlock back into place. Most of his freckles had vanished when he was a teenager, but a few still dotted his cheeks here and there, if you got close enough to look.

“Wit’ you?” he asked.

“Well, I’ll be in the room, yes. Lots of things to sign.”

Pickles turned over onto his side and one eye slivered open. “Ain’t ya afreed I’ll throw up an somethin’ important?”

“It’s always a concern of mine.”

Pickles’ eye drifted closed again, and he drew his leopard skin up around himself. “If I puke, ya pramise ta hold my heer out of it, like ya did dat one time an my birthdee?”

“Sure.” Charles’ knees ached as he rose from the floor. He recalled his hands tangled in Pickles’ dreads, holding the mass of sweet-smelling hair back while Pickles retched over a balcony railing onto a crowded street in Rio.

“An’ you… pramise ta keep da fire goin’, so’s I don’t get cold?”

“What’s a manager for?” Charles pulled a pair of logs from the stack beside the hearth, not minding the heat as he laid them in the flames. The wood began to pop and hiss as it caught. He brushed his hands on his slacks and pulled the wire screen closed around the mouth of the fireplace before returning to his desk to stare at the pile of certificates awaiting his signature. The album finished, and the stereo emitted a soft static until Offdensen hit the Power button on the remote and the room fell silent, aside from the crackle of the fire and Pickles’ slow, shallow breathing.

Fuck. How was he supposed to get anything done if all he could think about was Pickles’ freckled shoulders, Pickles’ goddamn slurred ‘Scansin – “It’s late, Charlie. Ya work too hard. Fack me anywee.” What if this was it? What if he had to resign as Dethklok’s CFO because he couldn’t focus on anything else ever again? 

Charles took a deep breath, picked up his favorite fountain pen, and got to work.

The moon rose late, casting a cold shimmer over the frost-tipped spires of Mordhaus, when a sleepy voice interrupted him.

“Heey, Charlie?”

“Ah, yes?” Charles glanced up to find Pickles watching him with a drowsy gaze, fingers combing through the thick softness of the leopard fur. 

“Ya know how tamarrow… I’m ganna go back to bein’ a hundred percent street? An’ yer ganna go back to nat – nat feelin’ the way ya do right now? And we’re both ganna pretend like none’a dis ever happened?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“Well, I’m still ganna think about it.”


End file.
